The gross manipulations of a United Nations commission to accuse Israel of 'genocide'

Yesterday, media outlets around the world published headlines claiming that the UN has accused Israel of committing "genocide" in Gaza.

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A commission created by a committee that admits countries that violate human rights

Only a few media outlets clarified that this accusation comes from a UN commission that does not have the right to speak on behalf of the organization, since it expresses itself through the votes of its General Assembly. Otherwise, one wonders how many have taken the effort to review this report, in which this very serious accusation is launched against a democratic country that on October 7, 2023, suffered the largest terrorist attack in the history of Israel and the largest anti-Semitic massacre since the Holocaust.

Unlike the vast majority of the media, I have spent some time reading the report and learning about the origins of the commission that drafted it. To begin with, the UN itself indicates that this commission was created by virtue of Human Rights Council resolution A/HRC/RES/S-30/1, a very controversial entity because, contradicting the United Nations' own principles, admits into its fold countries that violate human rights.

This commission was created with the support of dictatorships and Islamic regimes.

Just look at the outcome of the vote on resolution A/HRC/RES/S-30/1, which approved the "international commission of inquiry" that issued the report against Israel in 2021. That resolution was supported by several dictatorships that violate human rights: China, Cuba, Eritrea, Russia, and Venezuela, as well as by Islamic regimes such as Bahrain, Indonesia, Libya, Mauritania, Pakistan, Somalia, Sudan, and Uzbekistan, where serious human rights violations occur. The resolution was also supported by far-left governments: Argentina, Bolivia, and Mexico.

No democratic European country supported that resolution. Germany, Austria, Bulgaria, the United Kingdom, and the Czech Republic voted against it. Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, and Ukraine abstained. Thus, this is a commission that is flawed from the outset, and whose members have also been embroiled in controversies against Israel. The Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs published in 2024 a harsh report by Professor Anne Bayefsky, director of the Touro Institute on Human Rights and the Holocaust and president of Human Rights Voices, criticizing the sectarianism and anti-Israel militancy of Navi Pillay, the director of that commission. I recommend reading in full here.

The commission has denied Israel's right to defend itself

To understand its degree of sectarianism, it is enough to note that in a report on Gaza written on September 5, 2023, that commission had already openly denied Israel's right to defend itself militarily against Palestinian terrorist attacks, claiming:

"The Commission notes that Israel has invoked Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, citing self-defence against an armed attack, to justify its military operations. In 2004, the International Court of Justice held that Israel is unable to rely on Article 51 in relation to an attack emanating from the Occupied Palestinian Territory, given that the whole of the Territory is under its effective control."

Anne Bayefsky noted that Palestinian terrorist groups welcomed this statement, as it virtually forces Israel to allow these criminals to murder Israeli civilians without the attacked country being able to defend itself. Bayefsky points out that this report was published on October 18, 2023, 11 days after the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. Point 5 of the report stated that Gaza was an "occupied Palestinian territory", despite the fact that Israel completely withdrew from that territory in 2006, even evacuating all Jews residing there. Thus, what the Pillay commission was saying was that Israel did not have the right to defend itself militarily from the largest terrorist attack in its history, carried out by Hamas from Gaza using war weapons.

The commission avoids referring to Hamas as 'terrorism'

In the report released yesterday (see PDF), the scandalous anti-Israel bias of the UN commission is once again evident. The report systematically omits Hamas's crimes and avoids labeling the criminal group as "terrorist." All references to Hamas in the report that include the word "terrorist" are quotes from Israeli accusations. The word "terrorism" does not appear even once in the text of the report, which is astonishing considering that we are talking about a war that began with a major terrorist attack by Hamas.

The reason for this was already explained in the aforementioned report by Anne Bayefsky: "The quotation marks are defended on the grounds that the UN has no definition of terrorism. They fail to mention that the UN does not define terrorism precisely because Islamic states demand an exemption clause for killing Israeli Jews."

In fact, on October 3, 2022, Saudi Arabia addressed a statement to the UN (see PDF) on behalf of the OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) calling for the resolution of "outstanding issues including those related to the legal definition of terrorism. particularly on the distinction between terrorism and the struggle for the rights of self-determination by people under foreign occupation, and colonial or alien domination, as well as on the scope of the acts covered by the draft Convention." A distinction that allows Islamic nations to justify Palestinian terrorism by accusing Israel of "colonial domination," even though the people of Israel are inhabiting the land that has been home to Jews for three millennia.

Its report omits the Hamas terrorist attack from its 'factual findings'

Returning to the commission's report, page 7 provides a "Summary of Factual Findings" that begins as follows:

"On 7 October 2023, Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza, which included airstrikes and ground operations. The hostilities since then have seen tens of thousands of deaths, including whole extended families of Palestinians in Gaza wiped out, across several generations."

Curiously, the commission's "factual findings" omit the Hamas terrorist attack against Israel, which was the cause of this war and what motivated this Israeli military offensive.

The commission takes on the anti-Israel propaganda of Palestinian terrorism

But the matter would not be so serious if the commission had remained in the aforementioned omission.In point 177 (page 54 of the report), the commission states:

"The Commission notes that Israeli authorities have claimed that their military operations in Gaza were conducted for military necessity and specifically as: (i) an exercise of self-defence in response to the 7 October 2023 attack in Israel; (ii) neutralisation of Hamas to ensure long-term security; and (iii) securing the safe release of Israeli hostages who have been detained in Gaza since 7 October 2023. In a previous report, the Commission observed that Israeli authorities consistently presented military objectives for their operations in Gaza, yet their actions and their consequences indicated other motivations, including vengeance and collective punishment."

In the next point, 178, the commission bluntly embraces the narrative and lies of Palestinian terrorism to justify its attacks against Israel, stating the following:

"At the outset, the Commission notes that these events in Gaza since October 2023 have not occurred in isolation. They were preceded by decades of unlawful occupation and unlawful settlement, with racial segregation or apartheid, under an ideology requiring the removal of the Palestinian population from their lands and their replacement."

According to data from the Spanish Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which is hardly suspected of feeling any sympathy for the Jewish State, Israel has 9,842,000 inhabitants, of which 2,080,000 are Arabs (21.1%). Among Israeli Arabs, 82.6% are Sunni Muslims, 9% are Druze, and 9% are Christians. Israeli Arabs are full citizens. Accusing Israel of "apartheid" is a colossal lie. A lie repeated countless times by Palestinian terrorists and now also repeated by a UN commission.

It includes in its 'factual conclusions' the false death toll published by Hamas

That's not the only falsehood about Palestinian terrorism that the commission uncritically accepts. Point 20 of the report (page 7), among its "factual findings," states:

"From 7 October 2023 to 31 July 2025, 60,199 Palestinians were killed, of whom 18,430 were children and 9,735 were women."

To justify these figures, footnote 30 of the report links to a page on the website of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). I encourage you to read the page in question, because in providing these figures, OCHA points to the "Ministry of Health in Gaza," which is controlled by Hamas, as its source. In other words, in a report that has received worldwide circulation, a UN commission is publishing as "factual findings" figures published by a terrorist group that no one has verified, forgetting that this criminal organization invents these figures to fuel its propaganda.

Let us remember that in May 2024 the UN Secretary General apologized for publishing false Hamas figures attributing it to the "fog of war", but even today the UN continues to publish these false figures, clearly favoring the cause of the terrorists who attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. What this commission is telling us is that Hamas murders, rapes and kidnaps but is incapable of lying, or that a democratic country with a free press, such as Israel, deserves less credibility than a terrorist group that turned Gaza into an Islamist dictatorship. But the UN's embarrassment goes even further.

It believes that calling Hamas murderers 'human animals' incites genocide

In point 230, in the section dedicated to affirming Israel's alleged incitement to commit genocide (since for the existence of this crime to be recognized there must have been the intention to exterminate a human collective, according to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court), the report states things like this about the Israeli Minister of Defense, Yoav Gallant:

"Gallant referred to Hamas fighters as ‘human animals’. The Commission finds that the speech on 9 October 2023, which was given within the context of a total siege and blockade of supplies and aid, was directed at the entire population in Gaza and would reasonably be heard and understood as such.."

Absurd conclusions that could be used to accuse the Allies of WWII

That is to say, according to this commission, if you claim that all Hamas terrorists must be eliminated, you are inciting genocide, because this commission concludes, at its own peril, that this is an allusion to all Palestinians. Among Israel's supposedly genocidal claims, the commission also cites these words from Israeli President Isaac Herzog on October 13, 2023:

"It’s an entire nation out there that is responsible. It is not true, this rhetoric about civilians who were not aware and not involved. It is absolutely not true. They could have risen up. They could have fought against that evil regime which took over Gaza in a coup d’état."

Where in these words is the extermination of all civilians in Gaza proposed? Statements like this have been repeated for decades about the German population during the Nazi era, a German population that was bombed much more harshly, more indiscriminately, and with many more victims than Gaza, without anyone accusing the Allies of "genocide", except for those nostalgic for the Third Reich.

Is identifying Hamas as the 'children of darkness' calling for genocide?

Point 228 of the report reaches the point of delirium when it attributes genocidal intentions to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for comparing Hamas to the Amalek, an ancient people who were enemies of the Jewish people. The commission even sees genocidal intentions in this quote from Netanyahu:

"Remember what Amalek did to you... This is a war between the sons of light and the sons of darkness. We will not let up on our mission until the light overcomes the darkness."

Obviously, Netanyahu was referring to Hamas when he spoke of "the sons of darkness," but the commission was looking for any easy excuse to accuse Israel of "genocide" and used claims that would not hold up as evidence in any serious trial. Ultimately, what this commission is doing would not hold up in any court of law, unless one accepts false and manipulated evidence and absurd conclusions based on statements like the ones we just reviewed. Despite this, many media outlets and politicians have swallowed this false accusation without even bothering to read the report. And then they will still try to lecture us against disinformation and hoaxes.

The commission accuses Israel of 'genocide' but not Hamas

Finally, there is one striking fact in that report: the aforementioned commission accuses Israel of "genocide" but not Hamas, and it does so by lying, manipulating, and drawing absurd conclusions to accuse Israel. Recall that Hamas's founding charter, published in 1988, called for the killing of all Jews, a clearly genocidal purpose under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. However, that commission's report omits any reference to Hamas's founding charter. In fact, a report about a war sparked by the largest massacre suffered by the Jewish people since the Holocaust only mentions the word "Jew" once in 72 pages, and it's in an attempt to accuse Israel. If this blatant bias doesn't deserve to be labeled "antisemitism," then what do we call it?

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Photo: United Nations Photo.